h an
air!--that everybody is a humbug; that we are all rank snobs; that to
misuse your aspirates is to be ridiculous and incapable of real merit;
that Miss Blank has just slipped out to post a letter to Captain Jones;
that Miss Dash wears false teeth and a wig; that General Tufto is almost
as tightly laced as the beautiful Miss Hopper; that there's a bum-bailiff
in the kitchen at Number Thirteen; that the dinner we ate t'other day at
Timmins's is still to pay; that all is vanity; that there's a skeleton in
every house; that passion, enthusiasm, excess of any sort, is unwise,
abominable, a little absurd; and so forth. And side by side with these
assurances are admirable sketches of character and still more admirable
sketches of habit and of manners--are the Pontos and Costigan, Gandish
and Talbot Twysden and the unsurpassable Major, Sir Pitt and Brand
Firmin, the heroic De la Pluche and the engaging Farintosh and the
versatile Honeyman, a crowd of vivid and diverting portraitures besides;
but they are not different--in kind at least--from the reflections
suggested by the story of their several careers and the development of
their several individualities. Esmond apart, there is scarce a man or a
woman in Thackeray whom it is possible to love unreservedly or thoroughly
respect. That gives the measure of the man, and determines the quality
of his influence. He was the average clubman _plus_ genius and a style.
And, if there is any truth in the theory that it is the function of art
not to degrade but to ennoble--not to dishearten but to encourage--not to
deal with things ugly and paltry and mean but with great things and
beautiful and lofty--then, it is argued, his example is one to depreciate
and to condemn.

His Style.

Thus the two sects: the sect of them that are with Thackeray and the sect
of them that are against him. Where both agree is in the fact of
Thackeray's pre-eminence as a writer of English and the master of one of
the finest prose styles in literature. His manner is the perfection of
conversational writing. Graceful yet vigorous; adorably artificial yet
incomparably sound; touched with modishness yet informed with
distinction; easily and happily rhythmical yet full of colour and quick
with malice and with meaning; instinct with urbanity and instinct with
charm--it is a type of high-bred English, a climax of literary art. He
may not have been a great man but assuredly he was a great writer; he